Stacey and Tenzin Botsford at Red Door Family Farm in Athens.

STEVENS POINT – Red Door Family Farm in Marathon County will probably survive the Trump administration’s latest punch – the failure to honor grower contracts that supported schools, pantries and also boosted local foods in grocery stores. But the owners of Red Door aren’t so sure about some of their fellow local food growers.

The administration recently eliminated the Local Food Purchase Assistance Program and the related Local Food for Schools Program, and in the process reneged on funds already committed for this year, leaving almost 300 farmers across the state holding the bag, or, in many cases, the seeds.

At Red Door, owners Stacey and Tenzin Botsford won’t be planting the carrot seeds they ordered. “It would be bad business for me to do that,” says Stacey. “Some seeds are already planted, all the onions are, but there’s no reason for me to plant all those carrots.”

Like many other local growers, Red Door actually raises food that people eat. They’re the farmers you know at farmers markets all over the state. They’re also the farmers who help stock super markets with local foods. And, until now, they provided nutritious, locally grown fruits and vegetables to food pantries and schools.

What gets under their skin, Stacey Botsford says, is the arbitrary and capricious cutoff of funds already committed, funds that many farmers were promised and that caused many to invest in infrastructure and hire employees. “The part that really bothers me is, if next year they said, ‘We don’t value that program,’ that’s fine, but you can’t break the contract everyone signed. Now I can’t trust government contracts anymore. I cannot imagine the widespread mistrust of government from this.”

Red Door is probably diversified enough to weather the loss of up to $50,000 in anticipated income, but on a recent chilly spring day, rather than planting carrots, Stacey was searching for new markets.

She says she’s angry and heartbroken about the impact on other growers, including many Hmong farmers who invested in hoop houses and in some cases greenhouses based on projected income. “Greenhouses, you don’t own one unless you have enough to fill it. Heating those suckers is a lot of money. The LSP people were encouraging all the Hmong to build hoop houses and greenhouses. Those are huge investments.”

Local and regional foods are mainstream in most parts of Wisconsin and across the country these days. It’s been a success story of remarkable growth in the past few decades, built on the backs of farmers, many of them young, from a variety of  ethnic backgrounds. Some government assistance was available for hoop houses and other improvements, but for the most part, the growth was organic, from the ground up, without commodity payments or other government support. 

And while the local food programs were buffeted by the recent breach of contract, large commodity growers got a big boost from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to buffer them from the impacts of the Trump administration tariffs. USDA recently announced it will provide $10 billion in direct economic assistance to agricultural producers through the Emergency Crop Assistance Program EECAP for the 2024 crop year. The local foods programs were projected to cost $1 billion nationally.

The payments to commodity growers, notes Botsford, will reward farmers not to grow crops like corn and soybeans. “Government has always subsidized farms. We’ve been subsidizing farmers for years – all the commodity crops – and now they’re paying farmers not to grow crops,” while local commodity growers take their losses, she said. “So, they’re making it impossible to sell what you’ve committed to and giving conventional farms $10 billion not to grow.”

Red Door and hundreds of other farms rely on the Wisconsin Food Hub Cooperative in Waupaca to source and transport their produce. The Food Hub Cooperative is a farmer-owned business supporting the local food system. 

Tara Roberts-Turner, general manager of the Food Hub, likened the suspension of the programs and promised funding to a natural disaster. “This almost happened as fast and as crazy as a hailstorm. It pulls the legs right out from under you, and you’re left saying ‘Whoa, did that really happen?’” she says.

The Food Hub serves more than 400 Wisconsin farmers, providing transportation and distribution services, along with other grower assistance. Under the LFPA program and its committed funding, the cooperative rented trucks, expanded staff, and coordinated with farmers for supply in preparation in 2025.

The food hub and its growers are working to get the program restored, but there have been few good signs. “If the LFPA is not restored, years of building the local farmer-to-market infrastructure that the Food Hub Cooperative has built for farmers with government investment will be completely thrown out the window,” says Turner-Roberts. 

The cooperative and farmer members are all businesses, Roberts-Turner says. They have business plans, investments, overhead and bottom lines. The programs eliminated by the Trump administration were built on other government efforts to support local food security, she adds. That was an investment in local businesses and communities. “If you were to look at this from a business perspective, they would realize it’s not a very sound decision. They lose all the investment they put in and cut off a bipartisan plan to make the state’s food systems more stable. I think back to when these programs were kicked off, and it was supported by both sides of the aisle,” she says, adding that their farmer members span the political spectrum.

And it’s not just food pantries and schools. Supermarket chains like Kroger, Roundy’s and other grocers buy local foods produced across the state. “Food Hub growers supply over $3 million of produce to larger grocery stories and grocery distribution in the state,” Turner-Roberts says. If the growers don’t survive, local foods will dissipate. “We’re shipping to them year-round, everything from potatoes and apples to crops like zucchini and yellow squash,” she says. “The local Piggly Wiggly here (in Waupaca) has always been about supporting local. The premise is everyone knows this is important, right? When you ask farmers to buy seeds and implements and hire employees and then cut them off, it’s going to make them less likely to participate in those programs. These farmers are members of their communities, but they’re also business people.”

Like cooperative member Stacey Botsford, Turner-Roberts says it’s a heartbreaking time, even as spring planting is under way across the state. Are there any positives? U.S. Sen. Cory Booker has sponsored legislation to honor farmer contracts. “We have not seen any Republicans who have signed on to that,” Turner-Roberts says. “I find it curious. The food hub is not a political program. Food is not political. It’s not just farmers we’re worried about. We’re two to five years into a seven-year project we have with a bunch of partners in state that have basically created middle-of-the-road infrastructure to sustain ourselves as a state, whether it’s schools, pantries, whatever. What this means is that, next emergency we have that threatens our ability to feed ourselves, we’ll have to start all over. In Wisconsin, Meanwhile, at the Food Hub, “We’ve got truck leases three years out. We have to sign leases and find a way to pay for them and hire staff.”

The food hub has farmer cooperators in all 72 counties in the state. As Botsford at Red Door notes, a lot of them are left scratching their heads. “Margins are so narrow in farming, you don’t plant $50,000 in food and not have anywhere to sell it,” she says. “I’m talking to distributors all over the U.S., in the southeast and in bigger cities. There’s a fairly significant food shortage coming, with the California fires and people who work on farms leaving because they’re scared. People are concerned about the price of food.”

These days, she’s working with neighboring Amish farmers. “I tell them I will sell their food and take a cut.” Those neighbors don’t have coolers for food storage, but Red Door does. “I say, ‘I can move your food, and I have a cooler, so bring it to my house and put it in the cooler.’ I feel very responsible to help these folks …  these people need to sell their produce.”

Tenzin Botsford is on the board of directors for Neighbors Place, a Marathon County nonprofit that was established in 1989 by several churches trying to address needs in the community. “They don’t know what to do now, how to make up the difference,” Stacey Botsford says. 

Red Door does cooperate with Cattail Organics, a neighboring farm, to supply farm-to-family food boxes through the Hunger Coalition, operated by United Way in Marathon County. But the past few weeks have been rough. “The seeds are already in the ground for a lot of the producers. We are diverse enough to pivot, but I am concerned with the smaller farms, especially the Hmong farmers in our area who were encouraged to expand, make investments, and put all their trust in this one basket of eggs. My heart is breaking for all the families who will not get the produce and I’m perplexed at how starving the poor of nutrition and gutting the farmers who are producing food is going to propel the country in a positive way. It’s not good on such a big scale.”